El Fassed studied
political science at
Leiden University and worked as a
lobbyist and advisor for several
human rights and
humanitarian organizations, among others
Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (LAW), the Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO),
Oxfam Novib as well as
Oxfam International. He is co-founder of
The Electronic Intifada (
EI), a website that provides a Palestinian point of view on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He quit his involvement with the site in 2009. In 2007 El Fassed was involved in a spoof involving a letter allegedly written by
Nelson Mandela to
The New York Times journalist
Thomas Friedman. The letter made comparison between
South African apartheid to
Israel's treatment of
Palestinians. The memo was widely cited even by former American President
Jimmy Carter. In 2007, political writer
Joel Pollak reported that the memo was drafted by El Fassed who eventually wrote his own blog post professing that the memo was in fact his own creation. From June 2010 until September 2012, he was a member of the
Dutch House of Representatives. Since 2013, he is director of the Open State Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands that promotes democratic transparency, accountability and participation with the development of online platforms and promotes unlocking and re-use of open (government) data. == Bibliography ==